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Debunking Rumors of an Internet Takeover

PARIS — This just in from Geneva: The United Nations has no plans to seize control of the Internet. The Web-snatching black helicopters have not left the hangar.

Internet conspiracy theorists will be disappointed. The latest one, fueled by “open Internet” groups, Internet companies like Google and some U.S. lawmakers, was that mouse-clicking bureaucrats at U.N. headquarters in Geneva, supported by governments suspicious of the United States, were scheming to take over the Internet itself.

The plot went something like this: At a meeting in December of an obscure U.N. agency called the International Telecommunication Union, Russia, China and their ilk would try to wrest oversight of the Internet away from the loose collection of public and private organizations that do the job now, handing this responsibility to the I.T.U. All sorts of bad things, from censorship to the breakup of the Internet, would ensue.

By last month these fears had grown so fevered that U.S. lawmakers introduced a resolution calling on the government to block proposals that “would justify under international law increased government control over the Internet and would reject the current multistakeholder model that has enabled the Internet to flourish.”

Vinton G. Cerf, the “chief Internet evangelist” at Google, warned during congressional hearings: “The open Internet has never been at higher risk than it is now. A new international battle is brewing — a battle that will determine the future of the Internet.”

The alarmist talk gave rise to wire service and blog headlines like “U.N. takeover of the Internet must be stopped, U.S. warned” and “U.S. reiterates resistance to I.T.U.-U.N. Internet land grab.”

Time for a reality check. Documents prepared for the December meeting, which leaked out last week — yes, on the Internet — show that there are no proposals to hand governance of the Net to the I.T.U. The union insists that it has no desire to play such a role. And even if some governments would like to give the agency increased regulatory powers, the United States and other like-minded countries could easily block them.

“It would be wrong, and a bit silly, to talk about the I.T.U. ‘taking over’ the Internet,” Milton L. Mueller, a Syracuse University professor who is the author of “Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace,” wrote in a blog post. “It is, rather, the Internet that is taking over the world of telecommunications, setting more and more of the terms and conditions under which the I.T.U. and its operating entities function.”

Campaigners for an open Internet say this does not mean there are no grounds for concern as the December meeting, called the World Conference on International Telecommunications, draws near. The meeting was convened by the I.T.U., whose members include more than 190 countries and hundreds of telecommunications and technology companies, to update an international telecommunications treaty that deals with technical matters like how to connect cross-border calls.

“While I don’t think this represents a U.N. takeover of the Internet in the way you may have read in the blogosphere, some of the proposals go to the heart of how information travels on the Internet,” said Sally Shipman Wentworth, senior manager of public policy at the Internet Society. “Even small wording changes could have a considerable impact.”

The existing pact dates to 1988, when the Internet was in its infancy and telecommunications, in many countries, was still the preserve of government-controlled monopolies. The draft being prepared for the meeting, set to take place in Dubai, includes several Internet-related provisions, including measures to counter spam and bolster cybersecurity.

But the draft includes no proposals to change the Internet’s core governance functions, which are handled by groups like the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Internet Engineering Task Force and the World Wide Web Consortium. Icann, for example, oversees the domain name system while the later groups develop and maintain technical standards.

“It’s unfortunate that the Congress is spending so much valuable time on something that isn’t even on the table,” said Hamadoun Touré, secretary general of the I.T.U. “There is no single reference to Internet governance in the preparation document.”

That is not to say that some governments would not like to change the way the Internet is governed. China, Russia and some developing countries chafe at what they see as U.S. control over the Net, pointing to the fact that Icann operates under a mandate from the U.S. Commerce Department.

Icann has irked governments around the world, including Washington, with moves to expand the range of Internet addresses available. It recently created a new “top level domain” for pornography, using an .xxx suffix. This week the organization is set to disclose the applicants for hundreds of new domain extensions. The project greatly increases the range of addresses on offer, but critics say it could lead to trademark violations.

Last year, Vladimir V. Putin, then the prime minister and now the president of Russia, fueled fears of a power grab when he said during a meeting with Mr. Touré that his goal was to establish “international control over the Internet, using the monitoring and supervisory capabilities of the International Telecommunication Union.”

Dozens of governments have submitted proposals for the new treaty. For the most part, they have not released these to the public, a lack of transparency that has fueled fears about what might be discussed in December. Some of the proposed regulations, as outlined in the draft treaty, are indeed alarming to Internet freedom groups. One proposal would give governments the right to control the routing of international telecommunications traffic that originates within their borders. Critics say this could facilitate censorship by repressive regimes, even though existing I.T.U. rules, endorsed by the United States, already permit censorship.

In any case, analysts say it is extremely unlikely that the administration of President Barack Obama, which has repeatedly pledged a commitment to an open Internet, would endorse a treaty that permitted a crackdown on Internet communications or an expansion of the U.N.’s governance role.

“The majority of I.T.U. members agree with us in this regard,” Philip L. Verveer, coordinator for international communications and information policy at the State Department, said in Congressional testimony. “There are no pending proposals to vest the I.T.U. with direct Internet governance authority.”

What is really at stake, some analysts say, is money.

Robert M. McDowell, a member of the Federal Communications Commission, told a U.S. House committee last month that he was aware of treaty proposals that could enable foreign telecommunications companies to levy fees on Google, Facebook, Netflix and other U.S. Internet companies that are heavy users of bandwidth. This would be “devastating to global economic activity,” he said.

The European Telecommunications Network Operators’ Association, a lobbying group based in Brussels, has called for the treaty to permit the management of telecommunications traffic. Internet companies generally oppose this idea, calling instead for “network neutrality” — the idea that all traffic, from simple voice calls to bandwidth-heavy video, should be given equal priority.

The treaty “should acknowledge the challenges of the new Internet economy and the principles that fair compensation is received for carried traffic and operators’ revenues should not be disconnected from the investment needs caused by rapid Internet traffic growth,” the operators’ association said in a submission to the I.T.U.

Thus the real conflict is not over governance of the Internet, some analysts say, but over the division of the spoils, with international telecommunications operators trying to use the I.T.U. to extract revenue from American Internet companies.

“It’s very clever of open Internet people to play this as a U.N. takeover attempt,” wrote Mr. Mueller, who has done contract work for the I.T.U. and a variety of telecommunications companies and Internet organizations. “Maybe the whole thing would be better framed as a retrograde attack on liberalization in international telecommunications.”